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Thursday, January 17, 2019

"People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her handwriting was the best thing about her. But about the drip, drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters."

Dates read: July 29- August 2, 2017

Rating: 8/10

Arbitrary age guidelines are...well, arbitrary. A person isn't suddenly mature and responsible enough to drive a car the day of their sixteenth birthday if they weren't the day before. They don't suddenly understand all the implications of a contract they sign the day they turn eighteen if they didn't previously. There's no magic power to being able to handle your liquor at 21. But since it's enormously impractical to examine these kinds of milestones on a case-by-case basis, we develop a shorthand. Most 16 year olds are in a better headspace to drive than those younger than them. By the time someone hits 18, they're more mature and responsible than they were even a few years ago, more able to make adult decisions. And your brain is more developed by the time you get to 21, better able to absorb the impact of alcohol.

One of the more controversial age guidelines (and one that tends to vary depending on place and circumstance) is the age of consent. In the US, it tends to vary between 16-18. Europe skews slightly younger, with most between 14-16. Again, there's no hard and fast way to assess if someone is "ready" to give knowledgeable consent, so you just have to set a standard and go with it. What is always inappropriate and often illegal is exploiting a relationship of power. So when Sheba Hart, an art teacher at an English school in Zoe Heller's Notes On A Scandal, begins a relationship with 15 year-old student Steven, she's clearly in the wrong. Sheba's story is told through the voice of fellow teacher Barbara Covett, as a manuscript that Barbara is writing in the wake of Sheba's deeds becoming public. At the beginning of the events that the book recounts, she's a bitter, lonely older woman who has had no real bonds with anyone besides her cat. When Sheba, lovely and ditzy, makes her teaching debut at St. George's, Barbara sets out to befriend the soon-overwhelmed younger woman.

Well, befriend isn't really the right word. She wants to become a necessary part of her life, the way she'd been closely enmeshed with a different younger woman years earlier who got married and will no longer speak to her. There's an implication that Barbara's interest is more than platonic, but I think making too much of a "repressed lesbian" angle is overstating the case. As I read it, Barbara's not trying to get into Sheba's pants, she's trying to get into her head and exert control over her. And the way Heller writes it (through Barbara's not-exactly-unbiased narrative voice), Sheba isn't exactly in control of her affair with Steven, either. The deeper Sheba gets in, the more he pulls away until he eventually ends it. And then it all comes tumbling down, leaving Sheba cast off from her family with no one to stand by her side. No one, that is, besides Barbara.

Heller has written a book with a lot of moral complexity. Barbara is certainly manipulative, but she's also desperately lonely, and is understandably very hurt when Sheba throws her over after she's had to put her cat down to go cavort with Steven. Fundamentally, she wants to be important to another person, which is something most of us want (although most of us aren't as manipulative as Barbara). Sheba is the one crossing the boundary with Steven, but she met her much-older husband when he was her professor in college, when she was only a few years older than her teenage lover, and Steven proves to be the party less emotionally invested in their relationship. Both women are predators, but neither is purely evil.

It's a book that may prove difficult for some people to read as it deals heavily with a adult-teenager, teacher-student relationship. Barbara, for all that Heller has given her some sympathetic qualities, is a negative character and given that the book is told from her perspective, I'd classify it as "dark" in tone. But it's undeniably compelling. Even though I watched the movie (years ago, when it came out) and remembered the "twist", as it were, I still found it interesting and enjoyable, in its own way, to read. I'd recommend it for people prepared for the subject matter.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week is a favorite annual topic of mine...authors whose work I've experienced for the first time in 2018! Even with how much I read, there are so many great writers who I haven't gotten to yet, so I like keeping track of which ones finally made it only my list each year. I like to reserve this list for established authors only, so I don't count ones who have only written one no matter how much I might have liked the debut!

Roxane Gay: I've loved her Twitter presence for years, but I'd never actually read any of her books until this year, when I read the searing An Untamed State. I'm definitely ready for more!

Iris Murdoch: I'd been curious about her ever since I watched her biopic years ago, but Henry and Cato didn't really do much for me. I do want to try The Sea, The Sea, but if that one also falls flat I'll probably call it quits with her.

Rainbow Rowell: One of the bookternet's favorite authors, I'd heard the for-adults Landline was one of her less successful outings, so I'm not going to let my underwhelm with it push me away from reading her well-loved YA.

Louise Erdrich: I found Love Medicine a little challenging to follow at times, but she's written a whole series of books based on the same fictional reservation and I'm curious to see how she develops these characters out!

J.M. Coetzee: One of only a few authors who've won the Booker Prize twice, I read one of those books (Disgrace) for my book club. It was very depressing but also really well-done, so I'm interested in continuing to explore his backlist.

Lawrence Wright: He's written a bunch of non-fiction, and reading his The Looming Tower (about al-Queda and 9/11) gave me faith that he presents solid research in a compelling way, so I'll for sure read more by him!

Elizabeth Strout: I'd heard great things about her writing, so I picked up her Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection Olive Kitteridge. It was good, and I'll absolutely grab more of her writing to read!

Jesmyn Ward: She's an incredible well-regarded young author, and while I have others from her that I'm still looking forward to reading, I thought Sing, Unburied, Sing was powerful but flawed.

Curtis Sittenfeld: Her short story collection got a lot of buzz this year, and reading her debut Prep definitely made me interested in reading it and the rest of her writing!

Michael Pollan: I've been aware of his books, especially those about food and eating, but reading In Defense of Food convinced me I don't need more.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

"The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it? Perhaps humanity would soon flicker out, but Kirsten found this thought more peaceful than sad. So many species had appeared and vanished from this earth; what was one more? How many people were even left now?"

Dates read: July 23-29, 2017

Rating: 9/10

Honestly, I would not survive the end of the world. I have no survival skills. I'm not strong, or a good shot, or a person who knows things about plants that you can eat. I'm a stress-crier and I don't think anyone want to deal with that trying to stay one step ahead of the zombies. My ability to perform critical analysis and produce a pop culture reference for every situation is not going to be valuable. So my fingers are crossed that the apocalypse happens (if ever) after I'm already gone.

There are some end-of-the-world scenarios, however, that don't discriminate between the heroes and not-heroes among us. Like disease. In Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, the world is devastated, like 99%-of-the-population-gone devastated, by a mutated flu that gets into the global transportation system. In Toronto, the events kick off when an actor, Arthur Leander, collapses while playing the title role in a production of King Lear. An EMT-in-training, Jeevan, leaps onto stage to try to help, while a young actress, Kirsten, playing a child version of one of the daughters watches it play out in front of her. Within weeks, the world as we know it has ceased to exist. No more internet. Shit, no more electricity. Some people are immune and survive, but are they the lucky ones?

The primary thread of the story follows Kirsten fifteen years later, as she and the other actors and musicians who make up The Travelling Symphony journey through coastal southwest Michigan. Small communities have sprung up along the shores of the Great Lakes, and the ragtag crew that makes up the Symphony continually loop around them, performing, taking their inspiration from a line from Star Trek: "survival is insufficient". The group is excited to return to one particular town, where one of their members left them to settle down, but when they arrive they find their friend gone and things much changed. The town is now controlled by a cult leader known as The Prophet. When a stowaway pops up after the troupe has fled, trouble follows.

There are a lot of time jumps in this book. So much so that it seems almost unfair to call it entirely a post-apocalyptic novel, since a decent chunk of the narrative actually takes place before the flu hits. It goes from Kirsten in her present, to Arthur in his early years, to an interview taking place after the flu but before the principal timeline, and so on and so forth. It sounds confusing, but the way that Mandel writes it it's actually pretty easy to follow. It's a tricky thing to pull off, a narrative that moves around in time as much as hers does, but Mandel is a talented writer and, for my money, makes the emotional impact even stronger by doing it.

This is a wonderful book, y'all. Not only does Mandel handle her narrative masterfully, she also draws characters that resonate. You care about them, even knowing that some of them are going to meet their end when the virus happens. It's not a book like The Road about despair and sorrow. It's a book about people, and the connections that are made and fractured between them. There are certainly dark moments, but the atmosphere she creates is overall one of poignancy and bittersweetness. I loved reading it and am planning on purchasing a hard copy (I read this on my Kindle) so I can have it on my bookshelves to re-read on paper. I recommend it to literally anyone who likes to read.

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're looking forward over the next six months and talking about the books we're super excited for! For me, these lists are always hard to put together since I'm so focused on backlist reading, but even I can't avoid the siren song of frontlist hype, so here are ten books I'm looking forward to coming out soon!

The Winter of the Witch: This was actually on my list last year, too...it was supposed to be released in August 2018, but the release date got pushed back. I love these books so I am super pumped for the final entry in the trilogy!

Say Nothing: I know basically nothing about The Troubles, and I want to know something, and the blurbs on this one look promising.

Daisy Jones and the Six: Taylor Jenkins Reid is an author I've heard tons of buzz about, but I've never actually read any of her work, and this book about a female-fronted band in the 70s sounds really good!

The Club: I love a dark campus novel, and this one from a German writer set at Cambridge looks like it's right up my alley!

The Dreamers: Karen Thomas Walker is another author I've heard good things about, and this story about a sleeping plague is supposed to echo Station Eleven, which I loved!

The Trial of Lizzie Borden: This nonfiction book apparently not only looks at the famous murder case, but focuses on the Gilded Age world in which it happened, which sounds super interesting.

Necessary People: Like everyone else, I occasionally enjoy a twisty thriller, and this story about frenemies in TV news sounds super entertaining!

Black Leopard, Red Wolf: I am definitely here for fantasy epics that aren't focused on the same old European settings and mythology, and so this African-set series opener from Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James is on my list!

Women Talking: I'm increasingly interested in stories about isolated religious communities, so this books (apparently based on a true story) about Mennonite women fighting predatory men within their community is very intriguing.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

"After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of those things is dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations. The moment I took my first burning snootful, I understood that this was the drug for me. Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit? These are questions for insecure potheads. The speed enthusiast knows that everything he says or does is brilliant. The upswing is that, having eliminated the need for both eating and sleeping, you have a full twenty-four hours a day to spread your charm and talent."

Dates read: July 20-23, 2017

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times bestseller

What is the standard for calling something "nonfiction"? It can't be 100% objective accuracy, because there's always something that gets left out of the telling. No one will ever be able to capture all the nuance, every single gesture and word that went into an interaction. I couldn't recount the full details of a three-minute conversation I had with my boss a couple hours ago, much less look back into my childhood and perfectly recreate important moments. So if it's not total undisputed truth, is it mostly true? More true than not? True in spirit? It's hard to draw a line.

When you make your living writing books of essays, usually prominently featuring your childhood, you're definitely liable to accusations that your treatment of the truth is...flexible, which is something David Sedaris knows all too well. Me Talk Pretty Some Day is the first of his books I've ever read, and I have to admit, some of the pieces it contains do strike me as a little too good to be exactly, totally true. The book is separated into two parts: the first focusing on his early life, mostly his childhood with his family, and the second focusing on his adult life, mostly the portions in which he lived in France with his boyfriend. He didn't speak French before he spent time there, and his frustrating attempts to learn the language are a major through-line of the back half of the book.

As in any essay collection, there are hits and misses. For me, personally, there were many more of the former than the latter here. Humor in books is a tricky thing...even if I find something funny, the most it usually provokes is a smile. An out-and-out laugh is a rare thing, but Sedaris managed to get a few good chuckles out of me (including while I was reading it on an airplane, which made me seem A+ sane I'm sure). "A Shiner Like A Diamond" (about David's sister Amy freaking out their father by wearing the bottom half of a fat suit on a trip home) and "Make That A Double" (about Ugly Americans refusing to even try speaking French, and the weirdness of learning to speak a language with gendered nouns) were particular highlights for me, but most of the pieces were decent to good, in large part because they weren't ever boring.

And that's where we get into the truth-telling. These are funny stories, based in fact. But are they true? There's been more than one examination into the accuracy of the stories Sedaris tells (this one from The New Republic is particularly thorough). So if they aren't really all that true, sometimes, does it really matter? For me, I guess the answer is that it depends. For these kinds of books (memoir-ish essays, usually humorous or meant to be), I'm generally proceeding under the idea that there might be some minor embellishment, usually to fill in dialogue or some of the finer details. But it seems like some of these stories in this book (particularly the one about the guitar teacher) are more than just slightly spruced up. And that's a little more bothersome. Part of the reason some of these stories are so funny isn't just because they recount humorous situations, but because those situations are supposed to have been real. If they're not actually real...I feel like there should be some sort of acknowledgement that these stories are based in fact but might have been dazzled up to tell a better story, maybe?

That probably sounds more negative than I intend it. At the end of the day, even after I read about the likelihood that some of these stories weren't exactly real life, I did enjoy reading the book. And for me, that's what counts. I enjoyed it enough, honestly, that I'm likely to continue reading other David Sedaris books, because I like his writing. My husband tells me that this is his best collection, so I'm curious to read more and see if I agree with him. I'd recommend Me Talk Pretty One Day to anyone looking for a mood-lifter (especially if you, too, have suffered through the indignity of learning a foreign language).

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! It's just now 2019 today (happy new year!), so let's look back at the best 2018 books I read last year. As usual for me with this list, I'm only counting books that were released in 2018...I so rarely have a chance to give frontlist reading a spotlight so I like to use the end-of-year list to do it!

Once Upon A River: The last 2018 release I read this year, and I guess I saved the best for last! This story, about storytelling as much as anything else, has echoes of folklore and creates some wonderful characters and I enjoyed it so much.

Seduction: I've loved Karina Longworth's podcast for years, so it's no surprise when she took her talents to the page I enjoyed it just as much! A fascinating look at Howard Hughes and the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The Butcher's Daughter: This book flew under the radar this year, but told a compelling story of religious turmoil of Henry VIII's reign (and what it meant to be a woman in that time frame) from the perspective of a nun.

An American Marriage: This book was on lots and lots of "Best of 2018" lists for a reason...when a young marriage is disrupted by a faulty conviction, where does the blame for the ensuing pain lie?

The Library Book: Susan Orlean's ode to reading and libraries tells a really interesting story about the history of the Los Angeles Library, including a mysterious fire that took place in the 1980s.

Everything Under: This debut novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and the rich atmospherics are a sign of a prodigious talent...but I didn't think her attempts to retell the Oedipus story entirely worked.

The Sky Is Yours: This book about a apocalyptic, dragon-infested New York City is deeply weird but managed to snag my attention and keep it despite how off-putting I often found it.

The Silence of the Girls: Another classic Greek story retold, this looks at the perspective of Briseis, the woman at the center of the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon in The Iliad. Women's voices in ancient epics are missing, and Pat Barker brings the very real limits of their lives and choices to life.

Children of Blood and Bone: This YA fantasy was one of the buzziest titles of the year, and it's easy to get sucked into...the plot takes off and never slows down over 500+ pages. But that plot movement is often at the expense of character development, and I'm not sure if I'm in any big hurry to read the second one that comes out later this year.

The Romanov Empress: The story of Nicholas and Alexandra, the last tsar and tsarina of Russia, is well known. But his mother, Maria Feodorovna, outlived them and this historical fiction looks at the end of the Romanov era through her eyes, as the Danish princess who became Empress of all the Russias.

Monday, December 31, 2018

And just like that, 2019 starts tomorrow! It's been a full year, both in life and books, and as always I'm so grateful that you've followed along with me. Starting a book blog and getting immersed in this part of the internet is up there with my better decisions, and I'm looking forward to continuing to connect with the wonderful people who make being a book nerd online so fun in the coming year!

In Books...

Messy: This is the sequel to a book I read last year, Spoiled, by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. While we return to the Hollywood world of the first book, the focus shifts from Molly to her sister, wannabe actress Brooke, and best friend, aspiring writer Max. When Brooke hires Max to ghostwrite a dishy blog to give her career some buzz, the longtime high-school enemies gain a new understanding of each other...and then a boy gets in the middle. It's got the same breezy, fun, light tone as the first book, without the weird tonal issues. Not a lot to it, but an enjoyable easy read.

Once Upon A River: On a dark winter solstice night, a strange man and a little girl who seems to be dead burst into the door of a riverfront tavern renowned for its storytellers. When the little girl turns out to be alive, she's claimed by three families who each have a reason to believe she could be their own disappeared loved one. The girl herself never says a word, while each of the three try to figure out if she belongs to them...and if she does, how to keep her, while other local figures dig into the mystery of her arrival. Deeply focused on the art of storytelling, this wonderful book draws together pastiches of familiar tales, tells love stories, references folklore, and knows exactly when and how to get the reader emotionally invested in its fantastic characters. I loved it.

Interpreter of Maladies: I've had this Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories on my shelf for ages, but it was chosen for my book club so I finally got around to reading it! While I absolutely loved Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake, this book suffered from the usual ailment of short stories- it was very uneven. Focused on stories about Indians, usually immigrants or going through some other state of transition, the opening and closing bits are gems but there were some that seemed well-written but ultimately pointless.

The Goldfinch: Donna Tartt's The Secret History has been a favorite of mine ever since I read it in high school. This, her most recent work, got a ton of critical praise and a Pulitzer to boot! While I did really like this sprawling epic about a boy who steals a painting from a museum after a bombing that kills his mother and the way his life is forever effected by that day, I didn't love it. I thought it was a trifle long and sometimes overindulgent, though Tartt's prose kept me hooked.

The Prince of Tides: I was excited to get back to Pat Conroy after how much I loved The Lords of Discipline when I read it a few years ago. But this one, although it had its merits, was much more flawed for me. There were some writing tics that got really old really fast, and switching back and forth between the past and present didn't always work as well as Conroy thought/hoped. His writing about the South is powerful, though, and it came around to being a solid read.

The Island of the Colorblind: Neurologist Oliver Sacks travels to islands in the Pacific to explore groups with a high incidence of total colorblindness and a unique neurological condition, as well as explore some rare plant life. Unlike he usually does, Sacks never quite settles into a groove, and the extensive footnotes interrupt the narrative.

In Life...

BFF2K18: My yearly trip with my high school besties took us to New Orleans this year! We had a great time exploring the city, partaking in the signature beverages, and eating food that was honestly amazing across the board. My fave might have been the Middle Eastern place inside a little corner market. Such good falafel.

One Thing:

With the temperatures dropping, it's officially cozy season. Hands down the comfiest sweatpants I have ever put on my body are these pile-lined ones from Uniqlo. Thirty bucks seems a little on the high end for sweatpants but watch for sales, they are 100% worth your money even at full price! I love them so much I have them in three colors.

Gratuitous Pug Picture:

Bonus Reading Stats!

I've been keeping track of some basic stats on my own (which I put in my annual update post in October and am not going to replicate here) since I started this blog. From using Sarah's Rock Your Reading Tracker this year, though, I discovered some things about my reading that I'd never really considered and wanted to highlight some!

I read a lot of debuts: I have honestly never even considered this metric before, so it was interesting to see! If I'd had to venture a guess, I think I would have thought I didn't read many because I think of myself as preferring established authors, but it turns out they made up almost a third of my reading!

I need to up my diversity: I don't think of myself as someone super focused on white authors and/or white experiences in my reading; in fact, I'd like to think I made an effort to include own voices. But I am not nearly as good at this as I should be! Less than twenty percent of my reading this past year was by diverse authors.

I think most of the books I read are decent-to-good: I set my "successful book" standard at 7/10, and over 50% of the books I read get there (58% at that)! If you add in books I read that I rated 6/10, though, it goes up to over 75%, so the vast majority of my reading is on the good side of average.

I'm pretty good at picking books for myself by browsing and going for trusted authors: When I look at my top recommendation sources, trusted authors (ones whose work I've read and loved before) feature highly (nearly 25% of my successful books!), as do things I've picked up just while browsing the Kindle sale or a secondhand bookstore collection.

My favorite reads are likely to come from Penguin Random House: No other publisher came close to publishing as many of my successful books...just under one third came out of one their imprints! Only Harper Collins and Knopf Doubleday had over 10% from the remaining publishing houses.